A cou­ple of sto­ries from Ontario today are related to the province’s efforts to reduce poverty. Ontario’s gov­ern­ment has a goal of reduc­ing poverty by 25 per­cent by 2013, but an advo­cacy group says the efforts are falling short.

From the CBC, this Cana­dian Press story looks at the report issued on the progress of poverty reduction.

The 25 in 5 Poverty Reduc­tion Net­work says some good steps have been taken but warns that with­out imme­di­ate pub­lic sup­port, the province’s poverty rate will “explode.”

In a report released ahead of the province’s own update, the group also says that repeat­ing the mis­takes of the 1990s reces­sion — espe­cially mak­ing cuts to pub­lic sec­tor pro­grams and ser­vices — will make it harder for peo­ple to move out of poverty.

It wants the province to review its rules around social assis­tance and make increases to the Ontario Child Ben­e­fit, afford­able hous­ing and the min­i­mum wage.

So the gov­ern­ment of Ontario is cre­at­ing a new task force to get it’s goal back on track. Some ele­ments of Ontario’s wel­fare pro­gram are in need of updates as some­times the pro­gram makes it more dif­fi­cult for the poor to escape their condition.

From The Toronto Star, writer Lau­rie Mon­se­braaten gives us some sta­tis­tics on Cana­dian welfare.

Almost 800,000 Ontar­i­ans – includ­ing about 236,000 chil­dren and about 260,000 dis­abled peo­ple – live on provin­cial wel­fare and dis­abil­ity sup­ports that leave most of them trapped in grind­ing poverty and despair.

Com­plex and con­fus­ing rules mean that for every dol­lar earned by a per­son on wel­fare or dis­abil­ity sup­port, gov­ern­ment cheques are cut by 50 cents. If they are liv­ing in sub­si­dized hous­ing, their rent goes up, too.

If two sin­gle peo­ple on social assis­tance rent an apart­ment together to save money, both will see the shel­ter com­po­nent of their cheques reduced accord­ingly, mak­ing it almost impos­si­ble to get ahead.

Wel­fare rates were cut 22.6 per cent by the Mike Har­ris Tories in 1995 and frozen for eight years until the Lib­er­als in 2004 began a series of small annual increases totalling 11 per cent.

In 2007, Sta­tis­tics Canada con­sid­ered a sin­gle per­son in a city the size of Toronto liv­ing on less than $17,954 after taxes to be liv­ing in strait­ened circumstances.

A sin­gle per­son on wel­fare receives a max­i­mum of $7,020 a year. A sin­gle dis­abled per­son gets $12,504. In real terms, that’s more than 20 per cent below what peo­ple on social assis­tance received dur­ing the reces­sion of the early 1990s.

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